Evaluating CCP's Anti-RMT Claims

After the first wave of action we've improved our methods a bit. Because of our focus on this subject [illicit RMT sales] we've seen some anecdotal things around the internet that aren't exactly scientific but do point somewhat towards impact.

• We've seen the cost of illegal isk go up
• We've seen illegal isk sellers having supply problems

- CCP Sreegs

I began my descent into the seedy underbelly of Eve Online's botting and illicit RMT world after listening to CCP Sreegs declare a war against botting at Fanfest in 2011.  Up until now I've mainly concentrated on the War On Bots™ as botting tears are among the best tears found in Eve. But as I find greater links between botters and illicit RMT operations and CCP's Team Security's actions against illicit RMT operations and their customers are increasingly publicized, I've become more interested in the actions of the illicit RMT companies that encourage much of the botting in New Eden.

In his dev blog on 26 April, CCP Sreegs claimed that the cost of illicit isk has increased and that illegal isk sellers are having supply problems.  About 30 minutes of research showed that prices definitely rose. MMOBUX, a website that specializes in providing reviews and pricing information for illicit RMT sellers for MMORPGs, showed an approximately 20% price spike in the median price of isk occurred from the last week in April to the first week in May.  While MMOBUX's list of 25 companies did not include companies like Iskbank.com, it does provide the biggest single list of isk sellers I could find.

The second claim is a little iffy.  Yes, an illicit ISK seller, Gamebank, posted the following message which I received when clicking on the Eve Online link on the home page:

"In these days, ISK is in short supply, we wish your kindly understanding if you found we could not send ISK to you instantly.That is why the price of ISK also increased so much.We are always keep watching over the available ISK and preparing to send ISK to you after received your order.

"Thank you for your support all long time! -------July 16th, 2009"

So is this just a message that the company posted in the wake of Unholy Rage and just conveniently never took down to justify bad service?  Of is this a statement of the current condition and just the last line was a leftover from Unholy Rage?  Or both.  I'm not sure, but this is pretty dodgy even for an illicit ISK seller.  Also, I should add I only spent an hour or so searching the internet for this story so there may be other sites warning customers about possible delivery delays.  CCP spends a lot more time looking into these things than I do.

While I was surfing around I decided to do more than just find the nice graph posted above.  I actually looked to see for how much the illicit RMT sites were selling isk.  I figured that because of PLEX sales from CCP that there was a cap on how much the RMT sites could charge.  I was wrong. If I purchase PLEX two at a time from CCP, the cost of 1 billion isk if I sold the PLEX in Jita at Sunday's average sales price (485,998,880.84 isk) is $36.01.  I found several sites that were selling for much more.  The sites are:

Dgamesky: $37.00/billion
IGEVE: $38.50/billion
RPGUU:  $39.90/billion
Ruby Farn: $49.99/billion

MMOBUX also reported that Dgamesky was recently reported for fraud multiple times and should not be used.  So not only is CCP not the most expensive option for purchasing isk, they also have the benefit of being a source players don't have to worry about losing their money due to fraud.  They just have to worry if they carry their PLEX around in a Kestrel.

One thing I did find interesting is that IGE, long the leader in the illicit RMT trade, no longer sells isk.   In fact, IGE is down to only selling in-game currency in 7 games: World of Warcraft, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Rift, Final Fantasy XIV, Runscape, DC Online and Tera. While games like Aion, Everquest 2, Lineage 2 and Vanguard still had links informing customers those games were no longer supported, the link for Eve Online was already gone.  A little more digging found that IGE probably removed the notice about discontinuing isk sales on 3 May.  A call out for assistance on Twitter resulted in CCP Sreegs replying that the last cached page from which IGE actually sold isk was from January 2011 although he thought they were selling fairly recently.  An ad for a site that features small time isk sellers from 9 November 2011 states that it polled IGE among other illicit RMT sites when comparing isk prices.  So apparently either at the end of 2011 or beginning of 2012, IGE made the decision that it could not make a big enough profit in Eve Online selling isk and withdrew its efforts to concentrate on more profitable games like Star Wars: The Old Republic that came out at that time.

Having waded through just a little bit of the muck of the illicit RMT business I can see why game companies would like to shut the practice down.  I personally would not trust any of those sites with my money.  CCP's Team Security is off to a fine start in the most recent anti-RMT campaign.  But it is only a start and they need to live up to the Security presentation at Fanfest and continue to put the pressure on.  Perhaps with a lot of new games coming on-line this year CCP could convince people that selling in-game currency is a lot less of a hassle and more profitable in those games than in Eve Online.

Eve Radio's Revamp And The CCP Invasion

Over the past couple of years when I've traveled to Europe on business Eve Radio has served not only as a link to Eve Online but as my primary radio station.  I could wake up, turn on my computer and listen to some tunes and Eve talk while getting ready for work.  Of course, with only one channel plus the jukebox, I sometimes wound up listening to some music I don't really like. That changed a bit with the addition of the rewind feature last year, but I still like fresh shows.

On 30 April Eve Radio expanded to four separate channels: Prime, Talk, Rock and Dance.  The Prime channel will contain "the best of the best" and when the shows are live will have no competition from other DJs.  From Monday thru Friday, the Prime schedule features live shows from 19:00 - 22:00 GMT/Eve time with reruns of the previous day's Prime show from 3:00 - 6:00 and 13:00 - 16:00.  Saturdays feature two live slots from midnight - 3:00 and 18:00 - 21:00 with replays from 6:00 - 9:00 and 15:00 - 18:00.  The schedule currently is:

Monday - DJ Moz
Tuesday - Destiny
Wednesday - DJ Wiggles
Thursday - DJ Daddy
Friday - JusJ4ck
Saturday - DJ FunkyBacon and DJ Helix

I'm pretty excited about the Talk channel.  When Eve Radio only had one channel with DJs, there wasn't a lot of talk shows because people like listening to music.  Now with four stations, I can listen to a bunch of talk shows and get the latest news.  I could listen to podcasts, but I usually download those on my iPad and listen to them on the train or on the plane when traveling on business.

I've mentioned the Prime schedule but neglected Sundays.  That's because we haven't heard the final schedule yet.  Starting Sunday, the Prime show from 18:00 - 21:00 is a talk show featuring CCP Affinity and CCP Diagoras.  That's right, CCP will produce a show on Eve Radio.  While CCP Diagoras is new at the whole internet radio business, CCP Affinity was an Eve Radio dj before going to work at CCP so Diagoras should be free to look up interesting statistics for the audience.  And where you find two devs there are usually hanging around.  Three hours of devs talking about Eve.  I love it.

The best thing is that if I miss the show on Sunday I'll be able to catch the show when going to work on Monday morning.  And if I miss it on Monday I can always listen on the rewind service.  The only cloud on the horizon is that internet problems may delay the start of the show until the 20th.  But I know have a new must listen radio show to listen to.

Eve Online's Tranquility Subscription Numbers Jump To 361,000

Some people may be surprised that the company with the most open policy about disclosing its subscription and concurrent user numbers runs a game with a reputation as having a player base full of griefers, scam artists and megalomaniacs. Of course, with a cliente as paranoid and distrustful as that found in Eve Online, openness is almost a requirement for CCP to gain the affection and loyalty of its players.

Just because CCP is open about its subscriber numbers doesn't mean finding the information is easy.  Eve's infamous learning curve extends to this area as well.  But though good times and bad, CCP has supplied its subscriber numbers to MMOData.net, a blog devoted to keeping track of the subscription numbers for all MMORPGs.  On Tuesday MMOData gave a few teasers about some of the data that will appear in the site's next update.  In addition to the news about Star Wars: The Old Republic, it was revealed that CCP had sent him an update:

"CCP has send me new EVE numbers, they look good, 361k subs, so they can celebrate their 9th anniversary knowing they are back on the rise."

This is indeed good news as Eve's numbers had fallen down to 340,000 subs in December 2011.  A 6% increase for the first four months is pretty good, especially compared to SW:TOR's 23% decline announced on Monday.

Now, I realize that many Eve players will question whether the 361,000 number is correct, and if it is correct, that it is an increase.  Many game sites give Eve Online credit for having over 400,000 subscribers, but CCP stated Eve had 400,000 active players, not subscribers, in a press release in February.  I looked back at the last Quarterly Economic Newsletter for Q4 2010 and confirmed that the population chart published was for accounts, not subscriptions.  A subtle difference that many in the mainstream gaming media fail to grasp.

But the MMOData figure is only counting those accounts who log into the Tranquility shard, not both Eve Online shards.  Both shards?  Eve is famous for having all players play on a single shard, but that is not true.  Due to the laws in the People's Republic of China, citizens of the world's most populous country play on their own server, Serenity.  When those players along with trial accounts are counted, Eve Online has well over 400,000 active accounts.

After criticizing EA yesterday for the way it misled and continues to mislead people about the popularity of Star Wars: The Old Republic, I thought I would end with this analysis of Eve from MMOData back in March:

"I received more datapoints from CCP, they truly are the most trustworthy source in the industry. They kept providing me with datapoints when EVE Online was in the decline. But this time they have better news. Their subscriptions have gotten back up to 352,5k in March 2012 from a lowpoint of 340k in December 2012. They had a little dip in between with the release of SWTOR, but as I expected, they quickly recovered, and I believe the recovery may even become a new high in the next few months.

"It all depends of course how they will handle EVE Online, and if they will continue to do it right. If they keep improving the spaceship game as they are doing since the Incarna debacle and improve Incarna sandbox style instead of with microtransactions I think they have large potential. I think they realised by now they are not the dinosaur of the industry, even if they get rid of microtransactions, but they are the turtle of the industry, slowly moving forward but outliving all others. I still have quite a bit of reservations on the implementation of Dust, but we will tackle that when we get there."

Sometimes companies who tell the truth are successful, even if they have 25% the subscription base of other games who seem to mislead people as a matter of course.

EA's Fuzzy Math

Looking at the performance of Star Wars: The Old Republic, EA should feel pretty good.  The MMORPG with the second highest subscriber numbers (after World of Warcraft) in the west.  1.3 million subscribers after four months, which makes it the most successful launch in MMO history. But put into context, the numbers aren't so good.  Looking at the coverage from the business press indicates that SW:TOR is dragging down the price of EA stock, which fell 5% in after hours trading Monday.

Reuters (via CNBC) - EA loses Star Wars users, shares tumble:

Electronic Arts lost 400,000 subscribers of "Star Wars: The Old Republic" in the fourth quarter, dealing a blow to its efforts to rely on the new game for growth and sending the game maker's shares down as much as 10 percent.

EA has poured more money and firepower into "Star Wars: The Old Republic" than it has any game in its 30-year history. Wall Street is closely watching to see if the game can succeed, since it could bring EA riches for years to come. If it struggles, EA's earnings will be hurt in future quarters.

Ian Sherr, WSJ's MarketBeat - Electronic Arts Shares Pounded on Weak Outlook:

As if the outlook on its own wasn’t bad enough, the sixth bullet point on the front page of the results included another bad nugget: subscribers to the company’s “Star Wars: The Old Republic” were below expectations.

The game, released in December, had 1.7 million subscribers at the end of the holidays; now, it has 1.3 million, meaning it’s a slow and likely hard slog to compete with Activision’s “World of Warcraft” and its massive base of 10 million subscribers.

Dan Gallagher, MarketWatch - EA sales beat targets; ‘Star Wars’ takes hit:

The stock had already slumped more than 26% since the first of the year — mostly on worries about growth of the new franchise that is one of the company’s biggest bets in trying to expand its digital business. The shares closed the regular session up fractionally at $15.13.

“In terms of the quarter, they met expectations,” said Colin Sebastian of Robert W. Baird, adding “but I don’t think anyone was expecting a 400,000 decline in ‘Star Wars’ subscribers.” ...

“The trend is clearly downward, and for an MMO like this, you don’t want to see a decline this early on,” Sebastian said. 

Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities said the numbers for “Star Wars” during the quarter suggest the game might “level off” at the 1-million-subscriber mark, compared to some earlier estimates of 1.5 million subscribers, “so the franchise is far less valuable.” 

He added, though, that the current valuation of EA’s stock is “ridiculously cheap.” 

Analysts were expecting EA to end the recent quarter with about 1.6 million active subscribers — defined as those paying for subscriptions along with players who are still in the free month of trials after buying the game.

Given the expectations of investors, EA leadership's reluctance to disclose the subscription numbers is understandable.  But did they feed into unrealistic expectations?  On the EA Q3 2012 earnings call on 1 Februrary, EA announced that it had sold 2 million copies of SW:TOR and had 1.7 million subscribers.  This was right at the end of the first free month those who pre-ordered the game received.

The good news continued as EA CEO John Riccitiello announced at the 2012 Wedbush Conference on 9 March that at the end of February that SW:TOR still retained almost 1.7 million active subscribers, although MMOData was less optimistic and put the number closer to 1.5 million.  But one attendee, Cowen & Company analyst Doug Creutz, actually forcast 2 million subscribers for SW:TOR by the end of June 2012.

As March turned to April and player discontent about low population levels on many of the SW:TOR surfaced, the outlook began to dim.  The same Doug Creutz who predicted 2 million subscriptions by June 2012 lowered his long-term outlook and caused a ruckus by predicting a subscription base of 1.25 million by March 2013.  He also stated that the 1.7 million subscriptions announced on 1 February would be the high-water mark for the game.  EA fought back to dispel the rumors of a falloff of subscriptions.  SW:TOR's lead writer, Daniel Erickson, told PC Gamer in an interview published 23 April that SW:TOR was not experiencing a drop in subscriptions but just a falloff in players logging in during peak hours.  That was the official explanation for the light server loads and the reason that Bioware was considering server mergers.  So two weeks before the Q4 2012 earnings call the official line was that SW:TOR still had around 1.7 million subscribers.

EA/Bioware did a lot of things to increase subscription numbers, but perhaps the most ethically questionable move was the granting of 30 days free game time to all accounts with a level 50 character as part of the launch of patch 1.2.  The incentive wasn't questionable because Bioware made a public relations blunder by stating that players with a level 50 character were its "most valued players".  The reason is that the move artificially inflated the subscription numbers reported on Monday's earnings call.

Why do I say that?  Because by giving the 30 free days, players who were about to let their subscriptions expire then counted as active subscriptions.  I believe a large percentage of players who preordered the game chose the 3-month subscription model.  Those subscriptions were originally due to run out on 18 April, although that was extended a couple of days due to server/patching issues.  By handing out the free time, EA locked in those players to be subscribed past the earnings call, thus inflating the numbers.  How much was added?  I don't know, but Daniel Erickson's comments indicate that a lot of players had just stopped playing even though they were still subbed.

I have read many argue, especially on the SW:TOR forums, that the above logic is incorrect because EA would be reporting the numbers as of 31 March, the actual end of the financial quarter.  That is simply incorrect.  EA's interim CFO Ken Barker stated on the call Monday:

"Let me provide you with an update on Star Wars. Through the end of the quarter approximately 2.4 million units have sold through. In our last call we indicated that we had 1.7 million active subscribers, and as of the end of April, we now have 1.3 million, with a substantial portion of the decrease due to casual and trial players cycling out of the subscriber base, driving up people who are all percentage of paying subscribers. We have already launched a number of initiatives designed to growth subscriptions. Initial responses have been positive and we are encouraged by the gaming community's reaction." [emphasis mine]

Based on other statements on the call, the future numbers for SW:TOR can't be good as EA is minimizing the importance of the game on the company's bottom line.  I thought this statement from EA CEO John Riccitiello was telling:

"First off, Star Wars' performance right now is very much in line with our original assumptions and the assumptions in where we are guiding folks to over the last couple of years. Where that puts it in our portfolio is, in terms of profitability from a franchise, it's in our top 10 but it is not in our top 5. So as a business contributor, while important, it is not as important as Medal of Honor or Battlefield or FIFA or Madden or the Sims or SimCity but it is more important than Tiger Woods PGA Golf."

If EA leadership thought that SW:TOR was going to have a big boost in subscriptions I know they would tout that number.  A figure of 2 million subs probably means a sustained income of approximately $25 million a month.  Instead, analysts are predicting half that amount.  I would not be surprised if that number falls to 800,000 by the end of the year.  For a normal MMORPG, a subscription base of 800,000 would translate into a very successful game.  But for the estimated $200 million in development costs EA/Bioware sank into Star Wars: The Old Republic?  Even 1 million spells disappointment, at least to investors.

The Digital Dozen: 8 May 2012

The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 6 May 2012.  For more details about the methodology, click here.  Historical data can be found here.

Rank	Prev Week	Game	Score	Hours Played
1	1	World of Warcraft	52.6	63,959
2	2	Star Wars: The Old Republic	12.8	15,519
3	9	Tera	7.4	9,039
4	3	Aion	6.9	8,367
5	5	Eve Online	3.9	4,728
6	10	Guild Wars	3.4	4,172
7	6	Lord Of The Rings Online	2.9	3,539
8	7	Metin 2	2.8	3,418
9	8	APB: Reloaded	2.6	3,197
10	11	Need For Speed World	2.0	2,379
11	12	Star Trek Online	1.4	1,729
12	NR	Vindictus	1.3	1,612

 Total MMORPG hours played Sunday:160,298 

MMOPRGs saw a decrease of 10.4% in the number of hours played by the Xfire community over the previous week.  

Tera Launches:  Tera's full launch was 1 May and the game quickly rose to the #3 spot on The Digital Dozen.  The biggest losers seem to be World of Warcraft as WoW tourists visited a new game and RIFT, which dropped off the list two weeks ago and will struggle to regain a spot.

EA announces new SW:TOR subscription number:  On the EA Q4 2012 earnings call yesterday the game publisher announced that subscriptions for Star Wars: The Old Republic had fallen to 1.3 million at the end of April from 1.7 million at the end of January.

SW:TOR lost 23% of its subscribers during this time

While the number of subscriptions declined by approximately 23%, the hours played by Xfire members declined by 61% over the same period.  As I speculated 3 weeks ago, I think part of the discrepancy between the two figures is that EA was doing things like giving out 30 days of free game time to people likely to unsubscribe at the end of April in order to keep the subscription numbers as high as possible.

For last week, SW:TOR saw the number of hours play decline another 10.7% over the previous week.

The Hulkageddon Effect:  This week is the first week I have both the Xfire data and Eve Offline data for the Eve Online player-run event Hulkageddon V.  During this event players try to destroy as many mining ships as possible.  Of course, the players who fly those mining ships don't like that.  One theory is that miners will sit out the event and not even log into the game.  In that case we should see a big decrease in both the number of hours played by Xfire members and the actual average number of players logged into Eve as posted on Eve Offline.  I now have numbers for 29 April, the first day of Hulkageddon V.  Now begins the test.  How well does Xfire reflect concurrency trends in Eve Online?

Xfire vs Reality

 

The graph shows the available data from 1 April to 6 May.  At the beginning of April the Xfire numbers to not track well with the actual average number of players online because of the technical glitch that added 1 hour to every player on 8 April.  But by the end of the month the Xfire numbers started tracking closer to reality.  In fact, for the first day of Hulkageddon V, the numbers tracked a lot closer than I thought they would.  Comparing 22 April to 29 April, the number of hours played by Xfire members declined 3.9% while the average number of players actually logged into Eve declined by 3.3%.  If the trend continues, the average number of players online on Sunday should have stayed steady or increased slightly as the Xfire numbers increase by almost 1% this past week.

The Biggest MMO Stories Of 2012 So Far

On Friday I posted a story in which I analyzed Massively's lack of coverage of the Burn Jita event in Eve Online on 27-29 April.  While I could understand why Massively reported the way it did, I disagreed with the decision because I thought they were missing covering an element of one of the major MMORPG stories of the year.

My criticism led to the obvious question: what are the biggest, most significant stories currently out there in the MMO space?  Below is a list of 5 items that will make it onto most people's top 10 story list of 2012 at the end of the year.

1.  The success of Star Wars: The Old Republic:  I maintain that the success of SW:TOR is the biggest story of 2012.  With a speculated development cost of nearly $200 million, EA has stated that the game needs to attact 500,000 subscribers to make money.  As a game that doubled-down on the DIKU model of games by utilizing massive amounts of voice acting, a successful run could leave investors believing that only big companies spending huge amounts of money can make a successful MMORPG.  And we could see a hardening of belief that games must be theme-parks to make money.  A crippling failure of the game could lead investors to believe that investing in MMOs is too risky and thus slow down development of AAA games if other new games can't be successful under a different model.  Looked at this way, SW:TOR is a lose-lose proposition for those who dislike theme-park MMOs.  I'm awaiting the verdict to see what direction the industry will follow.

2.  The selling of New Eden:  While EA/Bioware's major innovation is the introduction of voice-acting, Icelandic game developer CCP is thinking completely outside the box and in another universe with its plans for its Playstation 3 exclusive title DUST 514.  CCP along with Sony worked together to make DUST 514 free-to-play; the first MMOFPS designed as a free-to-play on a console platform.

But the unorthodox moves do not stop there.  DUST 514 is linking into the same universe and same server infrastructure as CCP's flagship game, the PC MMORPG Eve Online.  Eve Online, unlike every other large MMORPG, has all 400,000 accounts sharing the same game world.  Add in all the players of DUST 514 and the universe of New Eden will break Second Life's record for the highest number of peak concurrent users on a single game world.

In a genre in which game developers are often criticized for a lack of imagination, CCP is taking huge risks with innovative ideas.  That makes DUST 514, Eve Online and the crazy pack of space vikings in Reykjavik one of the big stories in 2012.

3.  Pandas in Azeroth:   Anytime Blizzard releases an expansion for World of Warcraft the MMO world takes notice.  This year's expansion, Mists of Pandaria, will attempt to stem the decline of players from Azeroth and keep WoW with over 10 million subscribers.  Will a horde of kung-fu pandas save the day?  Everyone will be watching.

4.  Guild Wars 2 is finally here:  The long awaited sequel to ArenaNet's Guild Wars is currently in beta and due out sometime in 2012.  Based on the Xfire numbers from 29 April Guild Wars 2 should solidify the belief among gave developers that cash shops are good and subscriptions are bad.  But according to ArenaNet, the story is not just about financial succcess.  The company claims to have improved upon the genre's standard questing mechanics and made character development and progression unique.  If true, those ideas will transform MMORPG development in years to come.

5.  The Secret World has no class(es):  Up until now, the top MMORPGs except for Eve Online all used character classes to guide their players and levels to give them incentives to move through the content.  Funcom is joining CCP in making a game without classes and levels with its new game The Secret World.  The game is also breaking tradition by setting the game in the modern world, linking to Facebook and having to conduct research online to complete quests.  Not reasearch as in the best way to beat an NPC.  Research like in university.  I anticipate a lot of puzzles.  While EA/Bioware made a super theme-park in SW:TOR, Funcom is attempting to pull off what promises to be a unique game.  Can they pull it off?  If so, The Secret World's Creative Director and Senior Producer Ragnar Tørnquist will have stuck a blow for originality, or at least against conformity in the genre.

Those are my five top stories so far in 2012.  I expect the list will change some as unexpected events occur, but I expect all of them to fall in the top ten MMORPG stories of 2012.

Burn Jita Coverage And An Interview With Massively's Shawn Schuster

On Monday I intended to publish a post about the mainstream gaming media's coverage of the Burn Jita event in Eve Online that occurred last weekend.  I was curious about what type of cookie-cutter coverage I would find about this event.  I found some of the coverage interesting.

Wesley Yin-Poole, Eurogamer: CCP: players' attempt to destroy Eve Online economy is "f***ing brilliant".  The article contains quotes from Eve's Senior Producer John Lander (CCP Unifex) and lead game designer Kristoffer Touborg (CCP Soundwave).

Josh Augustine, PC Gamer:  Nowhere is safe in EVE Online as Goonswarm suicide-bombs galactic trade hub.   A game journalist who used the connections he made at Fanfest to score interviews with John Zastrow, CSM 3 member and Alliance Tournament VIII commentator, and Goonswarm fleet commander Lazarus Telraven.  The last I heard Josh was on Twitter looking for ganking victims to do a follow-up story.  CCP's and Sony's efforts at flying in journalists to attend Fanfest paying off?  I don't know about that, but this was the best article I read about the Burn Jita event.

Erik Kain, Forbes:  DUST 514 Is A New Kind Of Shooter - An Interview With CCP Games CEO Hilmar Pétursson.  Before the interview in which Hilmar talked about last year's Summer of Rage and the importance of the Council of Stellar Management as well as DUST 514, Erik included a reference to Burn Jita and a link to the Eurogamer article.  This happened in a mainstream media outlet!

Jef Reahard, Massively: CCP analyzes EVE's Jita player event.  A look at the CCP dev blog summarizing what happened in Jita from CCP's perspective.  This article appeared on Wednesday.  Wednesday?

The reason I found the Massively coverage interesting is that, unlike most sites and even Forbes, Massively offered no coverage of the event over the weekend or even the days preceeding the event, choosing instead to focus on Escalation and the CSM.  I immediately thought up a long list of possible reasons why Massively didn't cover the event over the weekend.  But instead of speculating, I decided to live up to the name of the blog and sent in some questions to Massively.  Massively's Editor-In-Chief Shawn Schuster was nice enough to respond.  I say nice enough to respond because I tried to cover some of the conspiracy theories going through my head and he answered anyway.

The Nosy Gamer:  Is there a change in policy about what Massively will cover in Eve Online?  If so, why?

Shawn Schuster:  "Nope, not at all. We're a website about the most interesting MMO news we can find, and this very often includes EVE Online. We cover the game when it has major updates, press releases from CCP, or simply human interest stories. In addition, we have a weekly column dedicated to the game which is actually our longest-running column to date."

The Nosy Gamer:  In the past, Massively covered the Hulkageddon in-game events in which players held a competition to see who could destroy the most ships.  The latest event began on Sunday, yet this time I see no coverage.  Is it because this time Goonswarm is backing the event?

Shawn Schuster:  "The Goonswarm has no influence over what we do or don't write on Massively. I imagine our writers simply felt that this event wasn't interesting enough to write about as a community event. We don't write about every single community event in every MMO. I don't force our writers to write about anything that they don't know or care about, so if a bit of news isn't interesting to any of our writers, it won't be covered. That's exactly why I don't consider Massively's staff to be a collection of journalists, but rather a collection of MMO enthusiasts who don't just regurgitate every press release that comes across their inbox."

The Nosy Gamer:  In a recent appearance on Eve Radio, Brendan Drain stated that up until recently, Eve Online articles drew the most traffic to Massively.  With the introduction of games like The Old Republic, Tera and the Guild Wars 2 beta, are there less resources available to write about Eve?  Is coverage of games based on which will bring in the most traffic?

Shawn Schuster:  "Brendan's appearance on EVE Radio was not to be taken in any sort of official capacity. He cannot see traffic numbers on any articles or news posts aside from his own, so it's literally impossible for him to know those figures.

"With new MMOs releasing just about every month, it's inevitable that our attention will be drawn to the new games, but EVE Online is celebrating its ninth year and we're still talking about it on the site much more than any other MMO close to that age. We have several EVE players on staff who recognize the game's interest and level of fun, so we laugh at the recent attempts to convince EVE players that "Massively hates EVE Online." That's ironically untrue.

"Also, our coverage isn't based on traffic numbers as we don't get paid per hit, as many other gaming sites do. We want to write about what interests us the most, and what will interest our readers. Traffic does help us gauge reader interest, but we're not driven by traffic. If we were, we would talk more about games with higher subscription rates (World of Warcraft) or post pictures of half-naked women as header images for every post. That's the easy way to get traffic and that method has helped a site or two rise to the top. We do just fine by writing about what interests us."

The Nosy Gamer:  I've noticed that the comments for stories about Eve Online can get quite lively and heated.  Does the Massively staff have to spend more time moderating comments for those stories than for others?

Shawn Schuster:  "All of our posts can get quite heated in the comment section. We only moderate when the comments break our code of conduct and are reported by other readers. EVE Online's post comments are far from the worst as that's usually reserved for new or upcoming games and the hype that surrounds them. The passion for those newer games is quite high."

The Nosy Gamer:  Ten Ton Hammer stated it is conducting a review of those who it considers to be objective and factual first tier news sources in association with the entire PanelGate fiasco at this year's CCP Fanfest.  Has Massively been contacted by Ten Ton Hammer about this?

Shawn Schuster:  "No, we haven't, but it's important to point out that The Mittani writes for Ten Ton Hammer, so I don't see how that can be an objective perspective."

As I read Shawn's answers and exchanged emails with him, I came up with three reasons that I think explain why we saw no coverage of the antics occurring over the weekend in Eve.  The first is the timing of the event.  The person on the Massively staff who could have done the best job with a write-up is Brendon Drain in his Eve Evolved column.  But Massively has a rule that all articles must be submitted by noon Eastern time the day before publication.  Writing a column like Brendon's about an event like Burn Jita that was still ongoing probably isn't a smart move.  I know I wouldn't try it.

What about the other writers on staff?  That brings me to reason 2; a shift in emphasis on Eve news.  While Shawn stated that there is no change in the editorial policy on what Eve news is covered, he also gives his staff wide lattitude in what it deems the most newsworthy.  For example, on the day Burn Jita began, Matt Daniel wrote about the Council of Stellar Management instead of the ganking in Eve's major trade hub.  Which one is more important to the future of the game, especially with CCP stating beforehand that they would not interfere with Goonswarm's plans?  Instead of a slight to Eve, is Massively showing respect to the emerging power of the CSM?  That would definitely be a change in any MMORPG site's coverage of Eve.

The final reason is probably the most important reason of all.  If The Mittani and the rest of the CFC wanted widespread attention, they chose one of the worst weekends to attack Jita.  Gamers love shiny new games and last week featured a lot of shiny.  Fans of Guild Wars have waited years for a sequel and last weekend was the first open beta weekend for Guild Wars 2.  To give an idea of the interest, ArenaNet actually had to stop selling pre-orders of the game in order to keep the load on the servers down to a somewhat manageable level.  Looking at the Xfire community numbers shows that players signed up with Xfire played 55% more hours in the GW2 beta than they did playing Eve Online on Sunday.  Add in the interest in GW2 among the Massively staff and the launch of Tera and Goons being Goons doesn't rank all that high in importance unless you are highly invested in New Eden. 

Having given what I think is a reasonable explanation of Massively's lack of coverage of Burn Jita, I'm still a bit surprised not to have seen at least one article last week, even if it was only announcing that the event began 24 hours early.  I believe that CCP and Sony's partnership in the launching and running of DUST 514 is one of the most important stories in the MMORPG world in 2012.  The fact that CCP was able to allow their players in Eve to continue doing outrageous things in the sandbox is a hopeful indication that New Eden will remain the same place Eve players love after the DUST mercs join in the fun.  That a site as significant as Massively chose not to cover the event until days after the fact is disappointing.

However, I am not going to jump up and down and say that the folks over at Massively are horrible because I disagree about story selection.  One of my biggest complaints about the mainstream gaming media is the cut-and-paste pack journalism that frequently occurs.  Especially when the cutting and pasting is done really badly.  I'd rather a site not cover a story at all if it intends to just mail a story in because every other site is covering something.  The one thing that happened with the Burn Jita coverage is that Massively definitely marched to the sound of their own drummer.

Sigmund Freud on Eve Online

"Sometimes a titan is just a titan."
- Sigmund Freud

Contrary to the popular myth, Sigmund Freud did not believe that sometimes a titan was just a titan.  Just a titan?  The titan is the biggest, baddest ship in New Eden.  Resembling mobile battlestations and armed with a doomsday device and the ability to form jump bridges, these ships are terrors on the battlefield.

Freud was one of the first to try to figure out exactly what makes capsuleers tick. He suggested that the desire to dominate the universe and bad posting on the Eve Online forums originated from unpleasant or traumatic events like mining or reading local in Jita early in a pilot's career that were suppressed or repressed from the conscious mind. He theorized that the unconscious mind communicated repressed thoughts and emotions by means of symbolism. Thus the popularity of titans among many alliances, especially those who do not hold space in null sec.

Through his experience with the life histories of many pilots, Freud came to believe that the primal drive to acquire isk was a powerful influence on unconscious behavior because of the way corporations force new capsuleers to hide their shiniest ships and repress their tears. Freud divided the development of pilots into three phases, the noob, the carebear and the low/null sec pvper. He believed neurotic behavior often reflected a regression to earlier stages of development. There is great irony in the fact that Freud was a titan pilot (a mental fixation on an isk substitute), and rage quit from Eve after his Avatar was bumped out of a POS by Pandemic Legion and destroyed. That said, the phrase "Sometimes a titan is just a titan," is often (perhaps apocryphally) attributed to Freud.

CCP's War On Bots: Questor Tears, A Mixed Message

"Unfortunately RMT tears are a bit harder to harvest but if you can find a way feel free to share (don't link the site) and I will give you a virtual hug in my head."

- CCP Sreegs

CCP Sreegs is correct when he wrote that finding the tears of Eve Online RMTers is harder than collecting the tears of botters.  However, I found a place where I could find both RMT and botter tears intermixed: the forums for the Questor mission bot.

I went back to the beginning of the latest anti-bot, anti-RMT campaign and collected as many tears as possible.  I published the first set of tears Monday to celebrate that Questor's software developer Da Teach got busted right before Fanfest for illicit RMT.  Botting tears usually are fun but this batch is a bit depressing.  The other tears I've published are basically from players who just decide cheating is okay.  This batch includes tears from hardcore botters and RMT farmers.  To say that CCP Sreegs and Team Security have a lot of work ahead of them is a bit of an understatement.  But there are a few gems in this batch I got some laughs out of.

Enjoy!


27 February:

jakesmurf:  "Just a heads up on a potential banwave - I lost a few accounts this morning at downtime. There doesn't seem to be any particular cohesion in which ones got axed and which ones didn't. I had several bot accounts that were not banned, and two accounts that never botted at all did get banned."

persin:  "I can confirm, they are starting new ban wave. I had all my accounts that were linked to me banned for generic 2 weeks. I have not ever done RMT.  Oh, I ran questor around 18hrs a day everyday. Total of 7 out of 7 accounts temp banned."

smg:  "3 accs of total 7 were bannehamered for me today.  14 day's ban for using macro.  I have been botting for 18 - 20 hrs a day. No RMT from this accs"

Nocturn:  "6 of 6 Accounts Banned.  14 days ban for using macro.  23 Hours botting a Day.  No RMT from this Accs"

Botina:  "4 ban yesterday.  3 ban today.  15-18h per day.  perma ban all during work.  I am fucked..."

SamePerson:  "2\2 perma ban 25 Feb.  rmt and 23h per day."

28 February:

vicious666:  7 of my 84 bots got banned for 15 days + got ban on 2 non bot char who anyway where moving stuff around for the bots (such as freighter chars). 

fun part is i do rmt with 70 of them, and none of that got caught, pratically they banned me for 2 weeks half of the 14 bots i use for sustain my gameplay in eve.

i also heard some friends who got banned 1 char from total of 8 he was running from the same computer, but the other 7 are fine. so the ccp methods are meh.. random/made manually/susceptible to gm discreption /willing to indagate further/not related to the amount of time,

I know about ppl who got ban on theyr only single bot who where running max 8/H day and ppl with 15 24/24 untouched, so is hard to define a "cause"

tbh is more than a year and never got such issue, so seams now ccp have some "will" to stop questor , or is an economycs trick, 3k account banished,so in 2 weeks all 3k gonna change account-transfer/sell chars ? is a 100000$ dollar operation for them (in plex used) and they not lose a single account

Botina:  "Looks like i was ccp enemy no. 1. since i got permabans on 8 of 10 chars. Hm, what i done wrong...  Maybe just bad luck with little more dedicated GM..."

29 February:

gotteshand:  "Whats surprising about this is what was banned was not the botting accounts. All 98 are still intact nothing at all what they banned was 2 accounts where I collected the ISK in form of materials for super-capital and titan production. No rmt or anything.. Guess they wanted that isk gone badly because if API is right which it should since its still working all isk, assets etc are gone.. they just gone and wiped about 3trillion isk~ makes no sense to me with leaving the farming accounts intact wont hurt. Also talk to all the ppl I've outfitted with supers and titans in alliance no one received a ban. Bots and stuff has been up and running in not so crowed places ~5-6ppl local for 6 months now 23/7 over VPN's with 2 bots sharing 1 IP."

15 March:

Da_Teach (the Questor developer):  "Well it wouldn't be fair if I didnt post here :)  I got banned yesterday on 9 of my 10 accounts. I didn't run 24/7, max 8ish hours per day. But I doubt they got me for botting, I just did a lot of RMT :) The fact that they got my mule-char (and another char that never ran a bot in its life) pretty much proves that."

runkittyrun:  "Just got 2 week ban on 2 account, only one was running for a few hours yesterday, previous to that I ran it 20/7. The other account was the isk holding one.  Maybe CCP is doing round 2 of banning for fanfest?"

klak1212:  "3 out of 3 accounts banned for 'Macro use' for 15 days. Ran 23/7 (or as much as I could). Seemed like after the 1.5 patch, my clients were crashing constantly and then today I got banned."


26 March:

gotteshand:  "Fanfest Security presentation.. this is bad really bad..."

Edgar:  "Sky is falling.... Stop botting now...."

rixim:  "Most of this stuff is good for most of us. There are questions about the number of farmers in this community, but I suspect that those of us that do farm, are smart enough to not hold much isk or link accounts. :D"

Ganondorf:  "No Rixim i think Edgar is right, stop botting now, dismantle your farms, you (you = the farmers) got ccp's attention in the first place, they were not caring about bots at all, and now i read ban reports from players every day. Even now a guy doing only a small amount of hours of botting got banned for 30 days for botting. Also yesterday another guy got hit by the banhammer, and the day before as well another one. It's not a good time to bot."

Loller68:  "Fuck this, i was just going back in business to help sustain all my accounts.  Farmers fucked up everything, as always when money are involved it's always a mess."

2 April:

Blinker:  "Banned today for 14days; 1 never used Questor - Received the ban.  6 that used Questor also received the ban"

dawtips:  "I had 5 banned today. Running 20/5."

19 April:

The Vindicator:  "Accounts questor banned: 3.  Accounts no-questor banned: 2.  1month of ban"

Gray:  "6 bots + their logist/trader down the drain. All of them permbans for RMT (no warnings, no mail, just instaban). This set of accs has been running since 5 Dec 2011, though - which is a helluva lot of time for RMTing toons. Looks like either CCP gone lazy, or I've started to do something the right way..."

The Digital Dozen: 1 May 2012

The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 29 April 2012.  For more details about the methodology, click here.  Historical data can be found here.

Rank	Prev Week	Game	Score	Hours Played
1	1	World of Warcraft	56.1	75,149
2	2	Star Wars: The Old Republic	13.0	17,374
3	3	Aion	6.8	9,061
4	NR	Guild Wars 2 (Beta)	5.4	7,269
5	4	Eve Online	3.5	4,684
6	6	Lord Of The Rings Online	2.8	3,774
7	7	Metin 2	2.7	3,622
8	5	APB: Reloaded	2.6	3,453
9	NR	Tera	2.4	3,277
10	8	Guild Wars	1.7	2,315
11	9	Need For Speed World	1.5	2,043
12	11	Star Trek: Online	1.5	2,009

 Total MMORPG hours played Sunday:178,926 

New Kids On The Block:  Sunday saw the number of hours Xfire members play MMORPGs by 2% over the previous week.  Much of that increase is due to two games that make their debuts in The Digital Dozen this week, Guild Wars 2 and Tera.  Guild Wars 2 debuts at #4 with its first beta weekend.  This bodes well for the ArenaNet offering as Guild Wars still came in at #10 even with many of its players participating in the beta.  Tera makes its debut at #9 during its early access weekend for those who pre-ordered the game.  The official release is today.

The two games that dropped out of The Digital Dozen to make way for GW2 and Tera were Rift and Maple Story.

The Hulkageddon Effect:  What happens in a game when thousands of players start attacking other players who have no interest in fighting?  That is what is occurring now in Eve Online with the player-run Hulkageddon V event.  From 29 April to 29 May gankers will roam New Eden looking for unwary miners.  No place is safe, including the normally safer areas of high security space.

So how will that impact the amount of people actually playing Eve?  Sunday's numbers showed a 3.9% decrease in hours played in a week that saw an overall increase of 2%.

Starting next week I'll compare the hours played by the Xfire community vs the numbers provided by Eve Offline to see if there is a correlation.  The daily average numbers on Eve Offline are delayed by 7 days so I'll start making graphs next week.